Paper abstracts are invited for the seminar "Mathematics and Poiesis in the Long Renaissance," to be held at the 17-19 March 2019 Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting in Toronto. https://www.rsa.org/general/custom.asp?page=2019Toronto This seminar seeks papers that explore, develop, and theorize, in historically grounded ways, how the creative imagination connects mathematics and the poietic arts across the European Renaissance.

THEME: Natures, Pictures: Cavendish and Early Modern Science, Technology, and Creativity

Call for Papers

The society welcomes proposals for 20-minute papers on topics related directly or indirectly to the theme, or on any aspects of Cavendish, her work, her family (including William Cavendish, Jane Cavendish, and Elizabeth Cavendish) and her contemporaries, influences, and responses to her work. In particular, we invite panel proposals on the work of Anne Conway and other early modern women scientists and philosophers. Papers may explore, but are not limited to, the following disciplines:

Echoing Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Claude McKay notes, “You place your Seers with madmen, fools and rogues, Their words distort and twist.” This panel will explore the “distort and twist” of words, examining how Shakespeare’s literary work (re)defines and intersects with race and community today. How is Shakespeare recovered within minority communities? How is his work used in music to address race and contemporary issues? Why is his work subverted and reconfigured to address contemporary issues of race and nation? Do performances place the audience in a place of complicitness? This session invites papers that explore the intersection of his literary recovery and race.

The achievements of Early Modern literature in English evince the relevance of translation for literary history. The impact of translation on the development of new literary modes and genres during this period is often acknowledged. It is clear, for instance, that the sonnet in English, both as a verse form and as a mode of individual lyrical expression, is traced to its introduction to the English tradition through Wyatt and Surrey’s translations of Petrarch’s Canzoniere.

The theory of Imitation was a central topic of discussion in the ‘Republic of Letters’. The European community of humanists, philosophers, poets and artists was engaged in the dispute over the models to refer to during the creative process. How to develop a normative canon as a reference point for artists and writers in the practice of Imitation? Which poets and artists to select as the examples of ‘bello stile’?

While the authority of ancient models was universally acknowledged, the building of a canon of modern masters was under discussion. One of the typical environments of this discussion were the Academies, where writers, artists, philosophers, antiquarians gathered around learned patrons.